Italy Breaks Pledge and Deports Albanian Emigres

By ALAN COWELL,

Published: August 18, 1991

ROME, Aug. 17—
After granting sanctuary to hundreds of Albanian refugees, the Italian authorities reversed their pledge today, rounded up the fugitives in dawn raids on hostels and camps and sent them back to their crisis-ridden Balkan homeland across the Adriatic Sea.

The Albanians were the last of more than 10,000 who forced their way into Bari harbor in southern Italy aboard a commandeered freighter nine days ago. Most were deported earlier this week after the authorities placed them under inhospitable conditions at dockside and in a stadium.

While many refugees said they had fled Albania to escape crushing poverty, Italian officials have depicted them more as desperadoes and provocateurs dispatched by the Albanian Government to blackmail Italy into granting more economic aid.

But on Tuesday the Government seemed to relent, offering a reprieve to as many as 2,000 Albanians who resisted deportation to the last. The Italian Interior Minister, Vincenzo Scotti, said on Wednesday that their cases would be reviewed to determine whether they would be granted asylum.

Officials acknowledged today that the offer of sanctuary had been a trick to lure the Albanians into a position where they could be broken up into small groups and seized for expulsion.

"Letting them stay" for a few days "was the only way to avoid a massacre," Mr. Scotti said in a newspaper interview published today. "There were provocateurs among them. We disarmed them and now we can go after them one by one. The object was to weed out the violent ones with no right to stay."

Thus, the police raided the Albanians' temporary homes across Italy today and rounded them up, took them to airports under heavy guard and flew them home aboard civilian and military aircraft. The only ones reported exempted were several hundred army deserters, many still in their uniforms, who joined the exodus from Albania and could face severe punishment on their return home. Sending a Signal to Albania

Italy's handling of the episode, which included visits to Albania by senior Government officials, was intended to signal that the welcome given to an earlier wave of fugitives last March would not be repeated.

The decision provoked a wave of soul-searching among Italian commentators, whose emphasis shifted as the crisis turned.

Initially, when the authorities' treatment of the refugees seemed particularly harsh, Enzio Biagi, a commentator in the newspaper Corriere della Sera said: "The dream of the Albanians has faded, but so has that of the Italians. The fifth industrial power in the world is not capable of distributing 10,000 cups of coffee in three days. We were invaded by a throng of wretches in underpants; what would happen if they wore uniforms?"

An editorial in Il Giornale in Milan asked: "Have Italians become a people with a heart of stone?"

Once the authorities seemed to soften their line, however, a whole new set of questions and self-criticism arose. "The so-called battle of Albania ended the way all battles fought by the Italian state end -- capitulation," said La Repubblica newspaper in Rome.